


Of Brothers and Sisters

by IceDragon5683



Category: Numb3rs
Genre: Brother-Sister Relationships, F/M, Female Charlie Eppes, Gen, Like slow, Other, Remake of Original Series, Slow Build Charlie Eppes/Colby Granger, Trauma, Warnings have to do with past trauma, more tags to be added later
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-26
Updated: 2018-01-26
Packaged: 2019-03-09 20:10:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13488864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IceDragon5683/pseuds/IceDragon5683
Summary: What would be different if 'Charlie' stood for 'Charlotte'?Basically, just me exploring what could have been different in the series if our Charlie was a girl. Hope you enjoy reading it!





	Of Brothers and Sisters

06:00 Time 594 – E4 Map Grid 772 – 04 Case # 1st Murder Victim

Code Six, body of a dead female at a construction site off of Hill Street.  
No breakthrough yet in the brutal series of rapes that have rocked the Southland…  
________________________________________

Agent Don Eppes steps out of his car, nodding to his partner as he shrugs on his FBI jacket. “So, who are we dealing with here?”

Agent Terry Lake walks with him down the hill to the crime scene. “It’s the first rape victim he’s killed. Her name’s Rachel Abbott. 29 years old, waitress. Roommate filed a missing persons two days ago,” she reports. “And the new guy’s here… the one the new assistant director assigned?” As she says this, a black male in a suit walks toward the pair. She nods to him and introduces the two. “Don… David Sinclair.”

David nods and goes straight into his report. “Homicide says she called her job to report car trouble. Said she was going to phone Triple-A. Triple-A has no record of that call.”

The medical examiner hands Don a pair of gloves before saying, “No wounds or ligature marks. She probably suffocated. Lividity shows she was dead when the body was moved here.”

Don puts on the gloves and slowly kneels before the poor girl. She was left naked but laid in a manner that looked as if she could be sleeping and Don could clearly see her face and short, curly hair. He grimaces, she reminds him a bit too much of his own sister. He gently turns her head to the side and sees a familiar mark on her neck.  
________________________________________

Elsewhere, a young “driver” rides an un-motorized vehicle down a steep hill. Along the street, there were several students watching in excitement, some even chasing after the vehicle. A man watches this in complete confusion as he slowly exits his car at the end of the vehicle’s track. At the end of the track there is a timer and just as the vehicle comes to a stop, a young woman approaches it reporting, “21.07 seconds, 68.3 miles per hour.” The driver takes off their helmet to reveal another young woman with fair skin and perfect curls, smiling gleefully back at Amita’s report. “No one would ever guess you don’t have a driver’s license,” she jokes.

“MIT and Stanford can’t touch that,” the driver preens as she is slowly let out from her vehicle.

“Professor Charlotte Evelyn Eppes,” the man calls as he approaches the driver.

“Larry!” Charlie says, finally escaping the confines of the vehicle. “Give me a hand.” Larry does so without even responding and helps the young professor up.

“So this is what distracts you from helping me, your friend, your colleague,” he has to slightly restrain the giddy young professor from jumping around, “win the Nobel Prize for my 11-dimensional supergravity theory?”

Charlie easily accepts the notebook from Amita, “Well, in a way, this project is related to your theory,” she replies.

Larry stammers, waving to the vehicle. “This go-cart?”

Charlie looks at Larry, chuckling. “This isn’t a go-cart. This is an extreme gravity vehicle,” she explains while writing in her notebook as she looked over the vehicle one more time. “Its shape will help inform the next generation of high-performance automobiles.”

“Okay,” Larry interrupts, “hooray for making things go faster, but I fail to see how this will provide me the necessary mathematical breakthroughs I need to redefine the fabric of the cosmos.” Charlie grimaces at Larry as she kneels to the vehicle, quietly speaking to some of the engineering students.

Amita looks at Larry. “You know, some physicists do their own math. Ed Witten, Richard Feynman,” she sasses.

Larry shakes his finger. “Hurtful. I actually knew Feynman.” Charlie glances up to Larry. “I actually think of him often. You know, here’s a discussion: Why is it that we remember the past and not the future?”

Both young women send incredulous looks to Larry. “That’s a tough one, Larry,” Charlie replies. “Look, I’ll have time on Monday. I’ll run through some equations for you,” she offers, hoping this will be the end of the conversation.  
________________________________________

Don loudly drops his files onto the table. “Donny!” an elderly man calls.

Don smiles at his father. “Brisket. Must be Friday.”

Alan Eppes walks up to Don, asking, “What’s up?”

“I didn’t have time to drive home,” Don says, putting his hand on Alan’s arm. “Can I catch a shower here, maybe borrow a clean shirt?”

“Yeah, sure, be my guest,” Alan replies. As Don walks away, he calls, “Oh, and tell your sister to come down for dinner.”

“All right.”

“You want some? There’s plenty.”

“No, I can’t. I got to get back to work,” Don replies as he takes off his tie and heads for the stairs, almost crashing into Charlie.

Charlie is dressed in casual clothes that could easily mistake her as one of her students instead of the professor she actually is. “Hey, what’s going on? What are you doing here?” she asks. It was rare for Don to come over with his job and their somewhat stinted relationship.

“Just making sure you don’t take complete and total advantage of Dad,” Don replies, smirking as he goes up the stairs.

Charlie looks away. “Are you kidding? He wouldn’t know what to do without me,” she jokes. Charlie slowly walks over to the table where Don’s files were. Alan looks up from the dining table just as Charlie slowly unravels Don’s map, looking over the highlighted points.

Don sighs as he exits the shower and dresses in some clean clothes, buttoning his cuffs as he descends the stairs. He glances up to see Charlie messing with the map. “Charlie, what do you think you’re doing?” He walks over, trying to gently push Charlie away from the map. The less involved Charlie is in his work, the better. For many reasons.

“Crime scenes. What kind of crimes?” Charlie asks, ignoring Don’s question.

Don ignores her question. “These are confidential case files,” he scolds as he rolled up the map.

“She just looked at the map,” Alan called, returning his attention to feeding his parakeet. “I made sure she didn’t go through anything else.”

“Good,” Don grunts, grabbing his tie from the chair in front of Charlie.

“13 crime scenes spread over a contained region,” Charlie persists. “You guys are analyzing the significance of those locations?”

“Yeah, it’s called predictive analysis,” Don replies as he tied his tie, knowing which battles to fight when it comes to Charlie. “The FBI pioneered it. I trained it at Quantico, and it doesn’t work on sado-serial crimes. There’s no way to predict the location of the next attack.” He made sure to say all of this in a tone that made clear that there was no doubt or possible “vagueness” about these facts.

Charlie looks at Don. “You know, I helped you out on that stock fraud mess, and the IRS extortion case,” she reminds.

Don glances over at Charlie. “Yeah. This is different. It’s not about numbers,” he replies.

Charlie gives him a blank stare. “Everything is numbers,” she mutters as she looks out their backdoor to see the sprinkler. Charlie’s mind immediately began to make connections and a general equation already began to form. “Don,” she calls. “Hey.” She quickly grabs Don and tries to lead him back to the door. “Um, can I show you something really quick?” Don tries to reject, but Charlie interrupts him, “I know, I know. Just come with me. Here me out.” And as has always been the case, Don gave in to Charlie and let himself be led to their back door. “You see the sprinkler, yes?” she asks, hands already beginning to flay around in her excitement.

“Yeah, I see the sprinkler.” Don has over 30 years’ experience of humoring Charlie.

“You see the drops?”

“Yep. See the drops.” He turns to look at Charlie, waiting for the punchline.

“Even using math there’s no practical way to predict where the next drop water drop will land. There’s just too many variables. However,” Charlie places her hand on the door, blocking the sprinkler from view, “say I couldn’t see the sprinkler. From the pattern of the drops, I could calculate its precise location. It’s not about predicting the next site. It’s finding what the sites have in common. The point of origin.”

Don stares at Charlie, realizing Charlie’s implication. “Charlie, you’re saying you can tell us where the killer lives?” Charlie silently, but firmly nods.  
________________________________________

To help Charlie, Don begins to give her a lecture on serial predators, trying to make it sound as objective and neutral as possible. “The movements of a serial perpetrator are defined by his needs. He watches potential victims. Avoiding detection, he’ll frequent public areas, parks, streets that don’t get a lot of traffic, waiting for moments of isolation.”

“Isolated areas, high probability of attacks,” Charlie interprets for her math.

“TV distracting you?” Alan asks. The siblings were doing their research at the same table that happened to be near the only television of the house. “I could turn it off,” he offers.

“No, it’s fine, Dad,” Don assures. Charlie didn’t even bother replying, there isn’t much that could actually distract her from the math she found fascinating.

“What else? What else?” she prods.

Don looks over his own notes. “Serial offenders cover a wide region, but rarely commit crimes near their homes. It’s a ‘buffer zone.’ Early in a cycle, buffer zones will vary in size, but as the cycle matures they tend to stabilize.”

“These guys follow patterns,” Charlie realizes.

“Exactly.” Alan watches his children from his chair silently. “There’s also ‘distance decay.’ The more intensity the attacker feels about a crime, the further he will travel to commit it.” As Don said this, Charlie began to open one of his case files but before she could even look inside Don says, “You don’t want to look at those.” He quickly closes the file before Charlie could see the crime photos. Don may want Charlie’s help, but he still doesn’t want to throw his sister into his world.

“How do you gauge ‘intensity’?”

“By the nature and extent of the injuries, the length of each abduction, adherence to ritualized behavior,” Don replies. “I’ve listed the incidents by estimated intensity.” He gives Charlie a notepad with his values of all the attacks.

Charlie picks up the notepad and looks it over. “Oh, great. This’ll give me enough to start putting together some expressions. Just give me a minute,” she says.

“Sure,” Don replies, taking a swig of beer as he joins Alan to watch the baseball game. “Who’s up?”

“Shawn Green.”

“Ah Green,” Don groans as he sits down, “four games without a hit. He’s due.”

Charlie glances over at the men. “There’s no statistical evidence for a batter being ‘due,’” she states.

Don looks back at her. “I say he gets a high fastball, he smacks it out of the park.” Charlie smiles at Don’s declaration, huffing a laugh.

Alan nudges Don. “This is a tape of yesterday’s game,” he quietly says.

Don quickly shushes him. “I know” he whispers. “I read the box score.” Alan makes a noise, glancing back at Charlie, back to work on her math. Just as Don’s ‘prediction’ occurred, he loudly cheers, getting Charlie’s attention.

“Wow!” Charlie gasps. “Hey, you know, that was an anomaly.”

“Something like that, Charlie,” Don chuckles. Alan could not hold in his chuckles at Don’s little trick. “Shut up, Dad.”  
________________________________________

“What you’re talking about is a completely new way of identifying a perpetrator.” Terry is stunned as Don explains what he and Charlie had been working on. “Not who he is, but where he is.”

“Exactly,” Don agrees. “The question is, will it be accurate, and identify a small enough area.”

Terry looks at Don. “You think Charlie can do it?”

Don shrugs. “She can be a pain-in-the-ass, but she is a world-class mathematician. If it works, we have a whole new system for analyzing and investigating serial crime.”

“Wow,” Terry sighs, “that’s impressive.”

“Agent Eppes,” David calls, “the dead girl, Rachel Abbott?”

“What have you got?” Don asks.

“Microscopic particles of fungal matter were found in the victim’s lungs, inhaled shortly before death. Identified as black truffles. The kind you cook with.”

“So maybe,” Don considers, “the bag he put over her head is the one he bought them with.”

“There’s some 200 places you can find black truffles in this area,” David replies.

“Plus more on the Internet,” Terry adds. “I’ll, uh, I’ll get on it.”

Don looks back at David. “No car yet?”

David shakes his head. “Not yet,” he grimly replies.

Don looks at David. “Look, I know you’ve got a job to do for the Assistant Director, but there is a guy out there who’s attacking women. I need to know where your priorities are.”

“Sir, my first priority is to assist you on this case.” Don looks skeptical. “I’ve notified every jurisdiction from San Diego to Seattle. This car is not turning up.”

Don nods, “All right.” He leads David into the command center. “Listen up, everybody. We need to piece together Rachel Abbott’s last day. Where was she? Where was she going? If she was having car trouble, maybe she was on the way to a repair shop. Did she go to a movie? Was she shopping? Call all the parking facilities, deal with people on the premises. Did she break down on a freeway or a surface street? Ask CHP about abandoned vehicles. I know you’ve done some of this, but do it all, and then do it over again, please.”  
________________________________________

Back at Charlie’s office at California Institute of Science, CalSci, Charlie is beginning to work on creating an algorithm for Don’s case. She has on noise-canceling headphones playing her favorite “work music” as she drills her chalk into the chalkboard. As she works, she keeps going back to Don’s case files, his map, her other reference material, Don’s words running through her mind the whole time.

Much later, Amita walks into Charlie’s office, looking over Charlie’s math in slight awe. Charlie at work is always a sight to see. But she had a ‘job’ to do. Amita walks to Charlie and takes off Charlie’s headphone without actually touching her.

“It’s Monday,” she reminds Charlie. “It’s 2:45 in the afternoon.” Charlie gives Amita a blank look. “Monday. After lunch,” she tries again.

Charlie gasps, “Larry!” She rips off her headphones, races to her bike and bolts out of the office without a word to Amita.

Amita chuckles silently at Charlie. Once alone, Amita takes the time to really look at Charlie’s math. It was amazing. As always. But there was something… more to it than her usual math. Amita takes a sticky note pad and writes ‘DO NOT ERASE’ before putting the note onto Charlie’s board.

Charlie frantically bikes, looking left and right before finding the familiar figure of Larry Fleinhardt. “Larry!” she calls, getting off of her bike. “I’m sorry. I was busy working on something, I know I’m supposed to be going through some equations for you.”

Larry looks back at Charlie. “Yes. I wondered if I’d gotten the time wrong. Or the place. Or quite possibly the dimension.”

“No, I’m developing an application for the FBI,” Charlie explains. “You know what? You actually might be able to help me. The problem involves finding an origin point from evidence provided by scattered effects.”

“Somehow I doubt we’re talking about orbital paths and black holes.”

Charlie tilts her head, shrugging slightly. “Not exactly, no.”

Larry looks at Charlie before suddenly saying, “Evariste Galois. Brilliant young mathematician not unlike yourself, tackling the hardest problems in his day. But he got distracted. He got caught up in politics and romance.”

Charlie groans, “I know where you’re going with this.”

Larry powers on. “And at the age of 20, he was killed in a duel. And who even knows what he might’ve accomplished?”

“I would say I’m actually pretty good at avoiding duels,” Charlie offers with a wry smile as the two sits on a nearby bench.

“Charlie, what I’m trying to say is you are almost 30 years old. You’re at your peak as a mathematician. Many mathematicians do their best work in a very short time period, maybe five to eight years.” He stutters unintelligibly. “Hey, forget about me, forget about my supergravity theory. You have abilities. You could be helping define the nature of reality. All I’m asking is that you just consider how you spend what time you have.”

Charlie’s face begins to blank as Larry’s last words resonate with her. Suddenly, she knows how to complete her equation.  
________________________________________

Charlie and Amita briskly walked into the FBI building, clearly not entirely used to being there, floundering slightly to find Don’s office. They go through the visitor procedures and make their way to Don.

Don ignored the other agents’ amusement at Charlie’s unprofessional entrance and appearance as he ushers Charlie and Amita into their command center. While Don was in his dress shirt and suit pants, and even Amita was moderately well-presented, Charlie was dressed in her usual combination of whatever was most comfortable. Today, she was wearing loosely fitted jeans, a form-fitting tank top and one of Don’s old dress shirts, one of the many she “borrowed” years ago. Don tried not to notice how the men were undressing Charlie and the women were looking down on her. Charlie was an adult, he couldn’t go over-protective big-brother for every little thing anymore. Didn’t mean he was happy about it, though. And from Amita’s tense expression and darting eyes, she didn’t like it either.

Charlie bulldozed her way through the office, completely oblivious of Don and Amita’s concerns. She races to the pin-board asking, “Amita, could you put the first map right up here, please?”

Amita grabs the map in question and Don automatically says, “I’ll help you with that,” as he aids Amita. The two smiling secretly, both all too aware of how Charlie gets when she’s on a roll.

“Okay,” Charlie starts, going into ‘lecture mode’, “this map was generated by an equation.” She turns to clean off the nearest white board.

Amita flinches. “Charlie don’t erase that,” she says, worried it was something important to the case.

Thankfully, Terry reassures her, “No, it’s okay, it’s an old case.” At the same time, Don waves it off casually. He had already made sure that anything in the room that Charlie could ‘destroy’ wasn’t case related.

Charlie ignores this as she writes, most likely not even noticing anything, saying, “I’m writing the equation here in abbreviated form.” She pauses. “I’ve pin-pointed the area most likely to be the perpetrator’s residence.”

“You got the guy’s address?” Merrick asks, skeptical.

“Not the address, no,” Charlie corrects. “An approximate base. Um, okay, I’m using some of the same techniques that physicists use to find black holes, which can’t be detected in any way other than the effect that they have on objects around them.” Amita and Don internally wince. Charlie’s explanation would have worked perfectly on her CalSci students, but the agents in the room simply don’t have the scientific background to understand Charlie correctly. Don even noticed some of the agents in the back silently laughing at Charlie.

“Black holes?” Merrick is just being disrespectful now.

Don jumps to aid Charlie. “Walt, she based her work on FBI theories of serial crime.”

Merrick sighs, “Okay professor. Why don’t you just walk us through it?” Don nods to Charlie to continue, he’s got her back.

Charlie nods back, looking to Amita. “Amita, can you put up the enlarged version?” Amita and Don stand up to do so and Charlie addresses the rest of the room. “The first point, really, to take into account is that, when picking places to attack a victim or dump a body, the perpetrator will choose sites that appear to be selected at random. He doesn’t want you to make any conclusions about where he lives or what areas he frequents.”

“Right.” Don nods. He and Charlie went over this the other night.

“You know what?” Charlie smiles, now Don’s worried. “Let’s do an elementary demonstration, okay? So, can you help me just move this back?” she ‘asks’ the agents sitting at the tables around the room until there is a large space in the center of the room. Merrick watches, concerned, as Charlie essentially commandeers the room for her purposes. She then picks out ‘volunteers’ and instructs, “Just distribute yourselves randomly across this area here.”

Amita bites back a laugh, she recognizes this demonstration. Another Eppes Classic since Charlie prefers to make her classes interactive. One of the many reasons she’s so popular.

Once the agents ‘randomly’ distributed themselves, Charlie smiles. “Now, look what you’ve done. You have distributed yourselves,” she starts weaving through the crowd, using herself as the ‘measuring stick’, “at equal intervals.”

Don and Amita watch fondly. Now that Charlie was in ‘teaching mode’ and ‘math mode’ her movements were almost graceful as she weaved through the crowd.

“While true random patterns will include clusters.” Don and Terry realize what Charlie means, nodding.

“We’re spaced too evenly,” Terry says, a smile beginning to form.

Charlie nods. “Exactly. It’s pretty difficult,” Charlie pauses, “to consciously pick a random sequence.” She shakes her head. “Your target tried. But like you, he wound up with roughly even spacing.”

“In trying to avoid a pattern, he wound up with one anyway?” Terry’s voice becoming optimistic as everyone began to take their seats again. This was good. Patterns they understood. Black holes, not so much.

“Yep. Locations purposefully distanced from a site not on your map, but clearly marked in the perpetrator’s mind. Namely, his residence.” She turns back to the map and whiteboard. “The equation reveals the probability that each area has of being the subject’s base. Yellow is the hot zone.”

“I had a feeling about Silver Lake,” Terry comments, looking to Don, who was in deep thought.

“I estimate an 87% chance he lives in that area,” Charlie confirms, feeling confident again.

“You know,” Merrick starts, forcing Charlie to look back at him. “I don’t know a lot about mathematics, but this doesn’t make sense to me.” Don tries not to groan or smirk at the sight of Charlie squaring her shoulders. While Charlie may not be skilled at handling attacks on her person, doubts on her math, that she can handle. Better than anyone.

“Makes more sense than this,” she comments as she pulls the lottery ticket from Merrick’s shirt pocket.

Merrick grabs it. “You can’t win if you don’t buy a ticket,” he defends.

“Yes, this is true.” Charlie nods. “However, the odds of this one being the winning ticket are one,” she goes back to the whiteboard, “in 41 million. Which means if you bought 20 tickets every week, you would win the jackpot once every 40,000 years.”

As she was saying this, Terry smirks and looks over to Don. Don, himself, is hiding his own smirk behind his hand. Charlie gave this lecture to the Eppes family when she was eight. And no Eppes has ever purchased a lottery ticket since.

“Really?” Merrick asks, dejected.

“Yep,” Charlie replies, a cheeky smile on her face. “It’s basic probability theory.” She looks around the room, practically daring anyone else to challenge her math. Don and Terry made sure not to look at each other, or risk falling apart in laughter. Only Charlie could make the Assistant Director of the FBI look like a fool so easily, they hoped she would do it more often.

“Agent Eppes,” David rushes into the room, stating, “we’ve got the dead girl’s car. It’s in a parking structure in West Hollywood.”

The room comes to life and Don and Terry immediately get ready to leave. “Let’s go,” Don says. He looks back at Charlie as he makes his way out. “Test it. Run it against cases from the past that’ve been solved. Miller, pull some files for her to work with.”  
________________________________________

When Don’s team arrive at the scene, CSI is already combing through everything. As Don walks to the car, he’s called from behind. He looks to David. “Why don’t you check on the girl’s car, David?” He walks to the agent asking, “What you got?”

The agent points to the area just in front of him. “Someone waited here. We don’t know if it’s related to Rachel Abbot, but we’ve got cigarette butts, soda cans. Condition shows they were left here recently.”

Don nods. “Checking them for DNA?” he asks.

The agent nods. “We will.”

Terry looks around. “Why wait here? He couldn’t know her car wasn’t going to start.”

At that moment, David joins them reporting, “Nobody tampered with the car. The spark plug’s fouled, built up over time.”

Don looks down, imagining what the killer would be seeing. How he would have found Rachel Abbot. He then looked out, away from the parking lot, eyes narrowing. He pulls out a binocular and focuses on the nearest street sign, he clearly sees ‘Fountain’. “What street does that nurse Karen Silber live on? Fountain, right?” Terry quickly looks down at her file. “What’s the exact address?”

Terry flips through before saying, “634 Fountain.”

Don immediately says, “Get her on the phone.” He looks back through his binocular and almost immediately finds Karen Silber’s home. “That’s her house right there. He was watching Silber. Then he hears someone having car trouble; Rachel Abbott. Nice target of opportunity. But that’s not why he was here. He’s still after Silber.”

Terry gets off her phone, face grim. “Karen Silber didn’t show up for work today. Nobody knows where she is.”

Don starts running, Terry and David quick to follow. The three race to Karen’s front door. Don and David try the door, yelling for Karen while Terry tries the windows to find one unlocked. “Window open!” she yells. The three take out their guns before going through the window. And immediately upon entering, they find her. Karen, face agape with a plastic bag over her head. They were too late.  
________________________________________

Tonight, the Southland is rocked by the return of the L.A. rapist.

…stalked and killed by a man who had already raped her…

Karen Silber was found dead in her own home after an apparent second visit by the L.A. rapist. Neighbors insist they heard nothing…

The FBI agents watch several news channels as they cover what just happened, the entire room in grim silence.

Merrick breaks the silence. “We’ve ordered police protection for the other victims?”

“It’s done,” Don replies.

“You think he’ll go after another previous victim anyway?” Merrick asks.

“No. He’s too smart.”

Terry adds, “Very rare for a serial offender to go after the same person twice.”

“He probably intended to kill her the first time. She said she put up a hell of a struggle,” Don says.

Terry agrees. “I think in his mind he was just finishing what he started.”

“But we’re still at a dead end.” Merrick oh so helpfully reminds. He looks to Don. “What’s your next course of action?”

Don pauses, watching the news coverage some more. His face hardening. He goes back to the control center and moves the whiteboard out of the way of Charlie’s map. “Charlie tested the equation on five serial cases. In four, the perpetrator lived in the hot zone.”

“And she’s predicted a hot zone for this case,” Merrick concludes.

“Small neighborhood in Silver Lake. About 50 men live in the vicinity. If we move fast, we can get backgrounds and DNA on that many guys in…” Don looks to Terry.

“In 48, 72 hours,” she answers.

“No way we get a court order off an equation,” Merrick states. “You’re going to have to pick up discarded objects to get the DNA.”

“Coffee cups, cigarette butts and chewing gum. That’s the plan.”

Merrick pauses. “Alright.” He nods and walks away.

Don nods to the agents. “Let’s go.”  
________________________________________

Alan is feeding his parakeet when he unsubtly asks, “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your girlfriend?” When Charlie came out as bi, he merely moved his focus from boyfriends to boyfriends _and_ girlfriends. Alan’s flexible that way.

Amita looks up with a smile and Charlie blankly says, “You’ve met her before. She’s not my girlfriend. I’m her thesis advisor.”

“Oh,” Alan sighs. “Does that mean she can’t be your girlfriend?”

“It’s against the rules,” Charlie replies.

“Well, screw the rules,” Alan immediately responds. “What’s more important, learning or love?” Charlie and Amita both silently chuckle. “Well, I’m sure there’s no rule against the father of her thesis advisor asking her out.” He passes Amita a cupcake.

Charlie outright laughs now. “Go right ahead, Dad.”

“Actually, I’m spoken for, Mr. Eppes. Back in Madras, my parents arranged for a marriage to a family friend— a nice Hindu banker from Goa,” she sarcastically adds.

“Really? Getting married?” Charlie asks.

“God, no,” Amita laughs. “He’s a total ass.” Charlie smiles and Alan gives Charlie a look.

“Dad, you’re hovering over us. And we have so much work to do,” Charlie sighs.

“I thought you already helped your brother…”

Charlie interrupts him. “Something this complex needs to be checked and rechecked.”

“There’s one thing you and your brother have in common,” Alan muses, “on some things, you’re both very thorough. Other stuff…” he glanced over at Amita and Charlie. Their faces close together while they whisper and do math. He shakes his head. “You completely miss.”  
________________________________________

Don is arguing with the technician on the speed of the DNA tests when Charlie comes rushing in. “Don, there’s a problem with the…” Don holds his hand to her while he tries to convince the tech to work faster.

Don finally finishes his phone call and hangs up the phone. “Charlie, did you just say we have a problem?”

Charlie nods. “I did a test to verify the equation’s accuracy. I reversed it. Like running a film backward. I used the hot zone as a starting point and went the other way. It was supposed to confirm the known crime locations. It did not.”

Don groans, “I got 40 agents working two days straight. You’re telling me that, what, you made a mistake?”

Charlie makes a face. “Not my mistake. It was in the data that you provided.”

Don rubs his forehead. “Those reports have been checked and rechecked.”

“It was where Victim 12 was attacked. So, either you guys got it wrong, or I don’t know, she lied to you.” Don falls into his chair while Charlie says this.

Don looks up. “Why do you say that?”

Charlie pulls out a map. “It’s evident that these locations fit within a general pattern except for the first Karen Silber attack in Marina Del Rey. That’s way outside the areas defined by the other locations.” She points to the map. “I mean, just look at these numbers. 86 percent, 75 percent, 81 percent…” she points to Karen Silber’s location. “Two percent.” Charlie circled the number and even drew an arrow with the word ‘Anomoly!’ written (incorrectly).

“She was hiding something. Maybe this is it,” Don realizes.

“Numbers don’t lie,” Charlie adamantly states.  
________________________________________

Don and Terry are back at Karen Silber’s work, talking with her coworkers. “Why would she lie about where the attack took place?”

The co-worker replies, “She had an ex-boyfriend. She promised her fiancé she wasn’t seeing him anymore, but…” she shrugs, “she and the ex were still friends.”

Terry understands. “So if she was attacked in the area her ex-boyfriend lived…”

Don nods. “She’d lie ‘cause she didn’t want the fiancé to know where she’d been.” He looks to the coworker. “We’re going to need the address of that ex-boyfriend.”

The coworker blinks, before slowly nodding.

Don speed walks out of the building already calling Charlie. “Charlie, I have a new location for the first Silber attack. She was probably in Los Feliz, near Hillhurst and Franklin.”

Charlie marks the map. “Great. I’ll run the equation again. We’ll get a more accurate map.” She smiles as she hangs up.

Don and Terry come back to the office to find everyone packing up. “Wait a minute, what’s going on?”

David answers, “We got the last results. All 52 guys from the hot zone are cleared. Not a single match.”

Terry rushes to say, “Karen Silber lied about where she was attacked.”

“We got the right location, Charlie is generating a better map,” Don says as he tries to corral the agents back into the command center. “Please, just come in. Be patient.” Don’s cell rings at that moment and he looks to David. “Get on that map.” He picks up the phone. “Charlie?”

“It works,” Charlie preens. “The new location fits. The map’s much more accurate, from 87% to 96%.”

“Give me the new zone,” Don orders. Charlie relays Don’s order to Amita and she starts to give the coordinates of the zone with Charlie and then Don repeating them.

At the end, Don’s repetition comes off confused as David fills in the area Charlie found. “With better data, I was able to narrow it down to a smaller area. You only need to clear about 20 guys. I would assume that this will allow you, you know, a far more efficient use of manpower and…”

Don interrupts, “Charlie, you’re telling me the same area, it’s only smaller.”

“Exactly, smaller means more accurate.”

“No, we already cleared those 20 guys.”

Charlie freezes. “Um, what? No, that’s… well…” she falters, “you must have missed him.”

“You’re not listening to me, okay?” Don says, frustrated now. “We cleared all males in that zone.”

Charlie’s getting frustrated herself. “And that means you missed him.”

“Look you just said we’re dealing with degrees of probability.”

“Yes. 96%, you know what that means? I helped build an entire Weak Force theory with less than that.”

“Yeah,” Don sighs. “Well, it didn’t work. You understand? I’m sorry.” He hangs up.

Charlie grits her teeth slammed the phone to her desk and surprising Amita in the process. She grabs the eraser and clears the chalkboard. Amita watches, trying to call Charlie’s name, but Charlie just grabs a piece of chalk and goes back to the math. “Look, let’s take a break, huh?” Amita tries again. “Get some coffee.” Charlie ignores her. “Charlie.” Amita reaches out her hand to touch Charlie’s shoulder.

Charlie flinches away from her. “I’m trying to think,” she snaps. Amita’s eyes showed pain before she slowly walked away from Charlie. Charlie felt a pang of guilt at the sight but refused to allow herself to apologize.

She had to make this work. She had to. This is her only chance.  
________________________________________

It’s well into the evening when Charlie rides her bike through the pouring rain to a familiar arcade. She pushes her hair out of the way and looks around for the person she’s looking for.

“Larry…” she calls. Larry barely acknowledges her as he still focuses on his arcade game. “Something went wrong and I don’t know what. And now it’s like I can’t even think.”

Larry sighs. “Well let me guess. You tried to solve a problem involving human behavior and it blew up in your face.” He really did try not to sound smug about being right, but it’s hard.

Charlie pauses, then admits, “Yeah, pretty much.”

Larry nods, chuckling slightly. “Okay, well, Charlotte, you are a mathematician. You’re always looking for the elegant solution. But human behavior is rarely, if ever, elegant.” The game over, he sighs. “You know, the universe is full of these odd bumps and twists. You know, perhaps you need to make your equation less elegant, more complicated, less precise, more descriptive.” As he said this, Charlie’s mind began to race with this new advice. “It’s not going to be as pretty, but it might work a little bit better. And, Charlie, when you’re working on human problems, there’s going to be pain and disappointment,” he warns. “You’ve got to ask yourself is it worth it?”

Charlie races back to her office and clears her chalkboard. But she doesn’t return to the chalk. She sits down in her chair and looks at the file Don lent her. The file on the victims. She takes a deep breath and prepares herself before opening it to the pictures. The first thing she sees is the damage the rapist had done to a poor girl. Charlie feels her breathing get faster as she flips through the pictures until she gets to Rachel Abbott. There wasn’t too much similarity between her and Abbott, but the small similarities were enough to make her pause to stare at it. She couldn’t help but imagine what it must have been like for Don to come across Abbott and think of her.  
________________________________________

Charlie finally gave up and went back home and met with Don. “I can’t get my head around it,” she slowly admits. Even after her talk with Larry, after looking at that file, she still couldn’t figure out what was wrong.

Don is pacing. “What are we missing? Where’s the problem? And how do we make it work?” he says to himself. “We have to make it work.”

Alan is silently watching his children, hoping for the best.

Charlie rises from her chair. “We need to retest it. We need another run.”

“Well, that’s not gonna happen,” Don shoots down.

“Well, look. I know that it’s gonna be hard for you to talk your boss into doing it again, but we can’t stop after one attempt.”

“Charlie,” Don sighs. “I’m not on the case anymore. Okay?”

Charlie’s eyes widen in horror. No, it can’t be. “Why?” she asks.

Don feels horrible at hearing Charlie’s voice mixed in with fear and guilt. He looks to his father, but Alan turns away. This is up to Don.

“Because, my supervisor wanted fresh eyes on it.” Charlie’s face doesn’t look convinced. At all. She knew. Her equation ruined things for Don. Yet again, in trying to help him, she only made a mess for Don to clean up.

Alan finally speaks up. “Well, maybe the math is not the problem.”

Both children look at their father. “What do you mean?” Charlie asks.

“Well, you just said that there was something you couldn’t get your head around, and I know for a fact that it can’t be the math.”

Charlie looks to Alan. “What else is there?” she asks, clearly confused.

“Hey, maybe he’s right,” Don agrees. “I mean, this sprinkler totally made sense. That you could track back from the location and find out where the guys lives.” He looks at Charlie. “Right? Totally made sense. Maybe we’re thinking about this guy in too narrow a focus.”

“Are you saying that I need to consider more than his criminal activities?” Charlie asks.

“No, not exactly. I’m saying we maybe need to consider more than just where he lives. I mean, look at me. If you designed an equation to find my origin, you wouldn’t get my apartment ‘cause I’m almost never there.” At that Alan looks at Don disapprovingly, but Don powers on. “My base would be my office.”

Don’s last words begins to repeat in Charlie’s head, her mind racing away from her. “Which means…” she starts, “he’ll use his home and his work as points of origin.”

“Exactly.”

“I can design an equation to identify two hot zones.” She suddenly turns around. “Why didn’t I think of that? Don…” She stares at Don in awe while he shrugs. Charlie may be a genius with math, but she definitely isn’t with people. But that’s okay, that’s what he’s here for.  
________________________________________

Armed with Charlie’s new equation and hot zones, Don, Terry, and David head to Roland Haldane’s workplace and were able to save his newest victim before she ended up suffocating. Don looks up from his conversation with his team and the local authorities to see Charlie thanking an agent for driving her over.

“Hey, Charlie,” he calls. Charlie walks over to him slowly, looking around and clearly being a bit overwhelmed by everything. “Hey, come here. There’s something I want to show you.” Don walks over to her and guides her to what he wanted to show her. “Haldane lived in Central City,” Charlie’s face immediately sours, but Don continues, “but he’d just moved there three weeks ago. Look where he used to live.” He points to a parking permit for Silver Lake. Charlie looks up at Don, eyes widening, her body beginning to relax. “That’s why we couldn’t find him in the first hot zone.”

“He was there,” Charlie smiled, “but he moved.”

Don nods and smiles wryly. “Hell of an equation, Charlie.”

Charlie nods and looks out into the chaos. She sees Terry comforting the poor woman, David getting his hand bandaged, and the criminal’s body being loaded into the coroner’s van. Don looks out too and decides he should get Charlie home. “Come here.” He wraps his arm around Charlie and she immediately leans into him.

As Don led her to his car, Charlie can’t help but have the last word.

“Everything is numbers.”


End file.
